Unfortunately, UAW 2865 today falls far short of its potential. In the structure and culture of the union, autocracy and bureaucracy dominate, while democracy and transparency are sorely lacking. Power is overcentralized, causing campus chapters to wither and lose initiative. Members are misinformed and disempowered by an organizing strategy that prioritizes signatures on membership cards above the creation of a vibrant union culture among ASEs. The effect of all these problems is to diffuse and weaken our power, instead of joining it in organic unity in order to bring about positive change at UC.

Because we believe in the union, we are committed to changing it. UAW Members for Quality Education and Democracy (UAW-QUAD) was formed in order to reform our union, and to take up important fights which have been neglected due to the current weakness of the union. We seek a union that is strong and democratic; a union that is united in action and flexible in tactics; a union that embodies the concept of social movement unionism, and plays an active role in struggles to support our own members and others in our communities as well.

UAW-QUAD is an organization of, by, and for members of UAW 2865; however, we actively seek out allies who wish to work in coalition with us on core issues of worker and educational justice as well. We are united around the principles laid out in this statement, and in particular around these basic principles:

1. Democracy is Power
Democracy is not a luxury with which our union leadership can dispense as it sees fit. It is a necessity. The foundation of union power is an educated, informed, and involved membership. But members cannot be involved if they don't feel informed, and they cannot feel informed if they do not have access to accurate, reliable information -- which must go beyond the current mix of soundbites, "raps," and perfunctory legalese.

Members will only be involved in the union to the extent that they feel that it is their union. That means that members need to have a real voice in the development and execution of our union's strategy and programs. We can't expect members simply to follow orders developed in secrecy and handed down from a small leadership group. That's because how andby whom decisions are made can matter every bit as much as what those decisions actually are.

Democracy is not just about decision-making procedures. It is about leadership. For our union to realize its strength and power, we must create structures and strategies to identify and develop more leaders, not fewer. That in turn requires a culture of collective action and participation in our union, a culture where new ideas and initiatives are welcomed from the departments and the campuses on up, not dismissed because they somehow do not fit into a centrally-determined "program." It requires open lines of communication, not only vertically between our union's top leadership and the membership, but also laterally within and across departments and campuses.

UAW-QUAD is committed to building a stronger, more democratic union by educating Local 2865 members about our rights, providing accurate and accessible information about our union and union activities, organizing for greater transparency and openness in our union's decision-making processes, and fostering greater opportunities for member involvement and leadership development.

2. Justice in Education
The UC administration and Regents are corporatizing the university. In the corporate model, education is reduced to a purely economic exchange, measured in dollars spent against facts learned. For the corporatizers, there is nothing learned in a class with five or ten students that can't be learned more efficiently in a class of fifty or five hundred students. Exploration and creative thinking are replaced by rote learning and regurgitation. Many smart and dedicated students cannot succeed in this environment, and even those who can are denied the opportunity for their education to develop human faculties beyond memorization and obedience to authority.

As ASEs, we suffer from this corporatization both as students and as workers. Therefore, we have unique incentive to resist the corporatization of the university. By joining forces with other students and workers, we can create a powerful force capable of demanding a better and more just University of California.

UAW leadership has only recognized half of this equation. They see the UC's attempt to speed up and mechanize our work as nothing more than a threat to our working conditions. They fail to see the larger forces that are changing the university, in light of which the pressure on our working conditions is part of a much more general assault by corporatizing forces. As a result, they have not prioritized making alliances and working together with other groups who are struggling for a more just system of higher education. Our allies include students who are struggling to pay escalating tuition costs while their quality of education declines, workers and staff who are grossly underpaid by a university that increasingly directs its resources toward the very top tier of salaried employees, and faculty who must compete for a shrinking number of tenure track jobs as the university offloads teaching jobs onto lesser-paid lecturers and ASEs. UAW-QUAD applies pressure to our union leadership to help them see the larger context behind the attacks on our own labor, and we seek to build links with other groups with whom we can work together in pursuit of a more just university.

3. Anti-discrimination
Fighting all forms of discrimination must be a top priority. This means that as UAW-QUAD we dedicate ourselves to working against inequality and discrimination in our own ranks, within the UAW 2865, at the University of California, within the labor movement, and in our communities. The rights of minority groups must not be sidelined for the sake of prioritizing issues that affect the majority. This means that we are committed to fighting for the rights of those who tend to be marginalized within mainstream institutions on the basis of age, citizenship, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, race, sex and sexual orientation, and other attributes.

For UAW 2865 to be fully inclusive and democratic, we must go beyond promoting diversity in leadership to actively engaging in the struggle against discrimination at the grassroots level. This means supporting the efforts of rank and file members to make their union more inclusive as well as working with student groups to fight discrimination within the university. A union politics that puts anti-discrimination and minority rights at its very core is one that truly accepts that for a union and a labor movement to be strong, an injury to one is an injury to all.

4. Solidarity

Solidarity is the only route by which we can win victories in our struggles. We must practice solidarity in a way that goes beyond rhetoric to a real commitment of energy, and willingness to take risks and make sacrifices. And we must extend our solidarity to other UC workers, undergraduate and graduate students, and others in our communities who struggle for justice.

There are many reasons to prioritize solidarity. From a practical point of view, stronger solidarity among UC unions results in stronger contracts for each union. But our commitment is more profound than that. It flows from our vision of a democratic university accessible to all of California. Solidarity is the means by which we build alliances with other groups against the UC autocracy, in order to realize that vision.

Our union leadership has been ambivalent when it comes to solidarity. They usually take the right positions, but they rarely undertake solidarity efforts with the passion and energy that they deserve. They also fail to incorporate solidarity into our strategies for building and strengthening our own union. We need to make solidarity a higher priority, to practice it with more energy and commitment, and to broaden its scope to other potential allies.

UAW-QUAD is an organization of activists within UAW 2865. Our goals include increasing the quality of education at UC and supporting labor struggles at our campuses and in our communities.